Step Up To Writing

Parent Guide

Step Up to Writing is an organizational program that teaches explicit writing strategies within the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, final copy, proofreading, sharing) to help students organize their thinking and their writing. It is used primarily for informational, expository writing.

Through this program, our students have learned to organize and write in a logical order, expand and support their statements, and write cohesive multi-paragraph pieces, even at an early age.

Students learn some key strategies in the Step Up to Writing Program:

-          How to write effective topic sentences using Power Statements and Occasion/Position Statements.

-          How to write strong “Accordion” paragraphs

-          How to write strong topic and concluding sentences

-          How to make transitions between ideas

-          How to write comparison sentences

We are using color coding in class to define the paragraph components and structure

Green = Topic Sentence/ Concluding Sentence

Yellow = Key idea, Reason, Detail, or Fact

Red = Detail, Explanation, Example, Elaboration

Using these components, students “build” paragraphs in a variety of configurations. The most basic is:

Green: Topic Sentence

Yellow: Key idea

Red: detail

Red: detail

Yellow: Key idea

Red: detail

Red: detail

Green: Concluding Sentence